


not quite broken

by IrreverentFangirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Bisexual Female Character, Black Hermione, Gen, Happy Ending, Multiple Soulmates, No Dialogue, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmarks, Tamil Harry, implied Aromantic Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6697300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrreverentFangirl/pseuds/IrreverentFangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>what happens when you have multiple soulmate but none of them are romantic? what happens when you grow up in a world that idealizes romantic love and yet you never fall in love?</p>
            </blockquote>





	not quite broken

**Author's Note:**

> basically just a meta fic exploring platonic soulmates and internalized hatred. Notice how harry keeps thinking of himself as broken because he doesn’t feel romantic attraction/love. I’m somewhere on the aro-spec so a lot of this is how i’ve felt about myself, so...please tell me if anything i wrote is incorrect so i can strive to fix it. i tagged this as black hermione and tamil harry because it’s implied in the text, though i never wrote it straight out. i wanted to but couldn’t find anywhere it fit that felt genuine :(

When Harry was born, he had five sigs.  _ hermione  _ on his ribs,  _ ron  _ on his collarbone,  _ neville  _ on his ankle,  _ ginny  _ down his spine, and  _ luna  _ on his heart. This quite surprised his parents, neither of whom had even one mark. They were thrilled, and terrified, for their baby boy who would so willingly let so many people into his heart and soul. 

The Dursleys weren’t nearly so accepting. 

After all, they lived in a world where having more than three soulmates was ridiculous. Everyone had their three loves: platonic, childhood, and lasting. Or maybe they had less. But having more? Unheard of and unbelievable. Scandalous and just like their freak of a nephew. They taught him very quickly to never dare and show anyone his sigs, for what if they reflected on the Dursleys? That was not allowed, he wouldn’t make any more of a mockery of him than he already had. 

Dear lord, they were saddled with a foreigner and a  _ freak _ as a nephew already, they didn’t need to deal with his other abnormalities too. 

.

.

.

The first soulmate he met was Ron Weasley. He was tall and skinny with bright red hair and shocking blue eyes. He had an infectious smile and Harry could see his own name peeking out on pale, freckled skin from under the boy’s worn shirt. 

Harry was a little bit in love already and he was only eleven. 

Ron is thrilled when the  _ harry  _ on his collarbone emit a buttercup yellow light when he meets Harry Potter. Here he was, the youngest son of what was quite possibly the poorest family in the Wizarding World and his platonic was the Boy Who Lived. Finally, something that set him apart. 

Or so he thought until Neville Longbottom  _ (a short, plump kid with scared hazel eyes and a shy smile, skin tanned from lots of exposure to the sun) _ stumbled into their carriage with an inquiry about whether they knew where his toad was. Who the hell even brought a toad to Hogwarts. Especially when they had an old, rich name like Longbottom. Toads were horribly out of fashion and had been for the past century and a half. 

Next in is a Miss Hermione Granger  _ (a chubby girl with umber skin and an explosion of black curls, teeth too large for her mouth shining in the sun, and a curious gleam in her almost black eyes) _ . She, too, is Harry’s soulmate. She’s Ron’s as well, not that he cares much at the moment the sig on his palm glows a muted violet signifying her as his first love. Ron realized with a dull thud of reality that even with this, he is not unique or even special. He is just one among five. And his baby sister is even among them as well. 

Oh well, at least he could claim that he met Harry first. And the tiny boy was definitely coming home with him for Christmas, he had to meet Ginny. Maybe she was his first _-_ or his lasting, even. Oh, that would be bloody fantastic. Gin would be amazed to learn that her dreams of the _harry_ sig that they shared being the actual, real Harry Potter had been realized. 

.

.

.

In the end, Harry did not meet his  _ ginny  _ for almost a full year. She was bright and lovely though, with a wicked smile and warm brown eyes that Harry already adored. But her name was yellow just as  _ neville,  _ and  _ hermione,  _ and  _ ron.  _ Why did he seem to have a never-ending supply of platonics and not a single romantic love?

Was there something wrong with him? Was he unable to feel true love? Dudley used to say something along those lines when they were younger. ‘ _ Oi, look at the stupid freak. How could anyone love him when he’s so free with his soul? I bet he’s nobody’s soulmate at all.’  _

Obviously he was wrong. He was Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny’s platonic _.  _ So he wasn’t unlovable, but was he incapable of falling in love? 

Was he broken, just like his cousin had always said? 

He didn’t feel broken and he definitely loved his soulmates. But he wasn’t in love with any of them. He wanted them all to be happy with theirtrue loves and he wanted to be in their lives always, because they had parts of him. If he lost them, he would lose himself. 

Perhaps he would love his  _ luna  _ the way he didn’t the rest. Perhaps she would be his lasting. 

.

.

.

Realizing that so many of his soulmates were destined to fall in love with each other, if only for a while, was disheartening when he still had not found a single person that he even kind of liked as something more than friends. 

There were only two people he had met who made his heart flutter and they were both several years older than him, Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang. And even with them, the feelings were barely noticeable. 

For someone who was often accused of loving freely, he seemed to have very little  _ vera amoris  _ to give to anyone. 

.

.

.

Harry was fifteen when he finally met his  _ luna _ . She was beautiful and silly with huge grey-blue eyes that seemed to be permanently bulging, long blonde curls that fell to her waist in a tangled mess, skin so pale it was almost translucent, and an odd smile that seemed all too knowing. He loved her from the moment he met her because she didn’t care that he was Harry Potter, the so-called Chosen One. All she cared about was that he was kind to her. 

She only had two sigs; his and her mum’s. Her mum’s was grey, signifying death, and his was yellow.  

He had been crushed when her name turned out to be, just like all the others, platonic. He wouldn’t fall in love with her either. He likely wouldn’t fall in love at all. After all, marriages that weren’t between soulmates were incredibly rare. 

Harry spent the next two years watching as Ginny and Neville fell in love; watching Ron ignore his names and start dating Lavender Brown, whom Harry knew was supposed to bond with Parvati Patil; watching Hermione send Ron increasingly mournful and angry glares and Pansy Parkinson more and more horrified ones. Then he watched as Ron and Lavender’s relationship splintered and Ron realized that he did have feelings, romantic feelings not lustful ones, for one of his soulmates. One he knew very well. 

Harry watched as Ron and Hermione fell for each other, mourning that he would never have the simple love. The love of having known someone forever and finally realizing that the feelings you harbored were reciprocated. He would never have that. 

He was surrounded by beautiful people that were parts of soul, that he loved with his entire being and yet none of them would ever be the one, the one who was supposed to become his everything. He watched as Ron and Hermione broke up (as everyone knew they would, they weren’t each other’s lasting just their first, obviously they’d separate after a few years). 

The only person who might have understood how he felt, didn’t. Luna also had no romantic soulmates and yet she had confided in him that she was happier this way. That she had never enjoyed the idea of romance and was actually quite happy to avoid all the needless drama and to just have a bunch of friends, to have a family. 

But he had always wanted a wife or a husband and loads of children. It had been his dream for as long as he could remember, to have people who loved him without fail in the way the Dursleys never had. 

And his platonics did love him without fail, just as he loved them, but it still wasn’t what he wanted. 

.

.

.

Harry fought a war and emerged victorious with none of his soulmates dead and the knowledge that part of Tom Riddle’s soul had been lodged inside him. He was hurt and he was tired and he just wanted to get away from England and the constant memories, so he and Luna decided to travel the world. 

They kept in contact with all of their living soulmates and kept up to date with everyone. They learned that Ron had finally bonded with his lasting soulmate, Susan Bones and they were to get married soon. Hermione had finally accepted, after seven years of rampant denial, that Pansy Parkinson was her lasting and they were trying to reconcile. Neville and Ginny were married and were considering having kids. 

Everything and nothing turned out the way he wanted. He and Luna had bonded in a way that he had never grown close to any of his other platonics. He had a life separate from Voldemort and the war and he wasn’t expected to behave a certain way anymore now that he had removed himself from people who knew who he was from a glance at his face. 

His life hadn’t turned out the way he planned, but he didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing.


End file.
